What’s The Biggest Brand Promise You Can Make?

Hidden inside “sustainability” is massive business opportunity. And the biggest brand promise you can make.

Will you find it? Will you make it?

I’m here to challenge you today – to raise the bar on your business. Because I’m betting that, as good as you are, you haven’t yet unlocked the full potential of your company. Or its purpose.

You may think that “sustainability” is a lovely idea, but costly, impractical, nichey – a luxury or a distraction, or both. In fact, you’re throwing away money – yours, your shareholders’ and your customers – on resources, products, services and operations that you don’t need, and that expose you unacceptable risk in a world of rising resource costs and growing uncertainty.

You may think that “sustainability” is a “nice to have” for your business. Important, but not mission critical. In fact, it’s the engine of innovation for the biggest business opportunity of the century, and a powerful driver of innovation, and of both near term and long term economic value.

You may think that your company is “making good progress” – reducing waste, being responsible, designing better products. But in fact you’re missing the boat.

If you are willing to think about the emerging values of your customers, the attributes of your brands, the functionality and “all-in cost” of your products, and the long term social and environmental realities, you can leapfrog the competition through innovative products, services, supply chains and business models. This isn’t pie-in-the-sky futuristic stuff — it is here and now.

If you’re willing to tell the truth — to your customers, your stakeholders and yourself — about what you’re really here to do; if you’re willing to run your business by the logic of Earth’s 3.8 billion years of open-source R&D; if you’re willing to play big — perhaps bigger that you’ve ever thought possible — and execute brilliantly, you’ll gain higher profit and market share, lower risk, fierce customer and employee loyalty — and a sense of meaning in your life, and the lives of your colleagues in your value chain. Not at the expense of financial success, not as a corollary of financial success, but as an integral and indispensable component of your financial success.

How do we know? Because that’s what we do. With companies like Levis and Steelcase. Coca Cola and eBay. HP and SunPower. Avery-Dennison and Odwalla. And more.

How will you know? By bringing your senior leadership together with our senior leadership for one intense, focused, working day to examine the risks and opportunities that face your business, your current commitments – and aspirations – to address them, and your reason for being.

And to create the biggest brand promise to the market that you can possibly make — and deliver on.

Then, if you’re prepared to move on that promise, we will stand shoulder to shoulder with you – with your CSO, or as your CSO – to help you do just that.